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Subject:Re: If You Were Gonna Teach... From:dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 07 Mar 2002 08:36:52 -0800
Tom Murrell wrote:
>
> If you were going to teach a writing course to your Subject Matter Experts,
> what would you stress?
Sounds like a bad day at the dentist's office, but if there's no way out of it, I'd just hit a few high points: its/it's (assuming you've got it right yourself!), active/passive voice, subject-verb number agreement, excessive wordiness, ...whatever it is about their writing that makes your hair curl.
* You can use up ten minutes just getting everyone settled in with pizza
and a beverage.
* Keep your talk under half an hour.
* Around the 35-minute mark, give each of them a copy of Strunk & White's
"Elements of Style." It's small enough to look approachable, and
talking about it will fill up the rest of the session.
* If that peters out too soon, open it up for general questions.
Be sure to send them out with a cookie or two, and you might just make it. :)
--David
=============================
David M. Brown - Brown Inc.
dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com
=============================
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